4 Effective Tips for Your Call Centre Scripts

Josh O’Farrell of Spearline shares some key pieces of advice for creating call centre scripts.

Organizations are increasingly utilizing chatbots and instant messaging across their digital channels. However, voice still remains the most popular channel when engaging between customers and call centre agents.

Call centre agents could be facing hundreds to thousands of calls each day, with some of these callers being highly frustrated.

Putting your agents under pressure, leaving them in the dark and not knowing what to say, can be disastrous for your business and a poor form of management. To avoid frustration on both ends and to ensure your agents are looked after, a useful tool is to use call centre scripts.

These scripts can be a useful guide for your agents should a call ever go awry or begin to take a bad turn, helping you avoid customer churn and keep every member of the call centre team unified, accurate, and effective.

Given that call centre scripts often allow quicker, more effective handling of the call, it is easy to see why most call centres have committed to the idea with enthusiasm.

Below are four effective tips you should follow to help you develop effective call centre scripts.

1. Ensure the Scripts Are Genuine

Customers are often already frustrated and nervous by the time they reach a call centre agent. They want their concerns validated and resolved as soon as possible.

Therefore, it is important that call centre agents demonstrate to the client that they understand the issue as it is described.

Scripts should provide the agents with a way to respectfully clarify any relevant information that the caller shares with them and help confirm the problem at hand.

2. Allow Flexibility but, Where Necessary, Include Scripts to Ensure Compliance and Promote Productivity

Many call centres try to plan whole conversations, but this is generally impossible. Instead of trying to create a script for every scenario, prepare the agents so that they are able to handle unexpected problems properly when they occur.

Keep the scripts flexible and avoid excessive emphasis on implementing scripts to the point where the dialogue cannot be disrupted or diverted by customers.

3. Turn Your Scripts Into Knowledge Resources That Are Easy for Reps to Quickly Access

A script is not meant to be just a list of lines to say. If you have call centre scripts in that format, you should repurpose them to platforms and networks that will make your customer service representatives more open to the most important information.

Use your scripts to construct your internal knowledge base and make it searchable so that reps can find the relevant answer to any question they encounter more easily.

In order to get to the information they need, your reps shouldn’t have to read 500 words in script form, all while the client is waiting on the line.

4. Train Reps to Keep the Communication Two Way

Part of the scripting dilemma is that you risk talking at the customer rather than talking about them.

The distinction has a lot to do with whether or not you have time to really listen to the client or you are trying to jump in with an answer and whether or not you understand the question.

Josh O’Farrell

Agents should be prepared to stop periodically to check in with the customer to make sure they have the right details and see if there is anything the customer has to add. This can also help agents from droning to the point where a question was answered in the past.

Shorter replies and short delays give customers the ability to let you know when the problem is solved and get off the line more quickly.

For more information about Spearline, visit: www.spearline.com

Author: Robyn Coppell